


Defect

by willows_shame



Series: Peaks and Mountains [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Yellow Diamond, Dubious Consent, F/F, I'm Bad At Tagging, Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willows_shame/pseuds/willows_shame
Summary: "Darkness. Pressure. Then - light.She stepped into the world fully formed.She moved her limbs experimentally, looked down at her hands and wiggled each finger individually. She twisted to look down her back, examined the yellow shift that left the diamond imbedded in her chest exposed.There was a scoff above her, and then she heard her first word: 'Defect.'"Yellow Diamond knows from the moment she emerges that she is a defect. It takes millions of eons for her to stop believing that.
Relationships: Blue Diamond/Yellow Diamond (Steven Universe)
Series: Peaks and Mountains [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955239
Kudos: 16





	Defect

**Author's Note:**

> hiiii
> 
> i know it's been a while. i have to admit that i've had this written since before i posted burn, but uh the comments on burn scared me off. so let it be known that if you didn't like burn you're probably not gonna like this! i know that a lot of people have different opinions on characters in every show/book/movie/whatever, and these are just my opinions. and it's not like i think this is canon or anything; this is just one of my interpretations, an idea i had that i decided to write down. so plz be kind :)
> 
> as always, if anyone thinks there's warnings i should put in the tags that i haven't put, please let me know (kindly). i want everyone to be safe while reading.
> 
> disclaimer: i did not make any of these characters or places. they all belong to rebecca sugar and the other steven universe peeps.
> 
> happy reading!  
> \- willows_shame

_Darkness. Pressure. Then—light._

_She stepped into the world fully formed._

_She moved her limbs experimentally, looked down at her hands and wiggled each finger individually. She twisted to look down her back, examined the yellow shift that left the diamond imbedded in her chest exposed._

_There was a scoff above her, and then she heard her first word: “Defect.”_

_She looked up, but was not quick enough to catch her maker’s face. All she saw was a shining, pristine figure a head taller than her turning away, striding away, leaving her alone._

_She did not understand the feeling in her chest then. Later, she would know it as hurt._

* * *

Her maker returned after a stretch of as yet unmeasurable time during which she had learned several things about her existence. She had learned that she was Yellow Diamond. She had learned, soon after her maker left, the meaning of the word she had been called. She knew that her name and title was not “Defect,” but that she was, in fact, a defective diamond, likely meant to be as shining and pristine as that turned-away figure. She had learned to change her simple shift into an equally simple uniform. She had learned to harness the energy she sometimes felt welling in her gem, casting it out through her hands in streaks of yellow lightning powerful enough to crack the rocks around her.

This is what she was doing when her maker returned.

“Yellow Diamond,” a voice called, and she whirled in shock, lightning crackling around her fists.

And her maker stood before her.

She was glorious. Her light shone out with a radiance that nearly blinded Yellow at first, and she fought the urge to kneel in reverence. Her maker hummed, and cupped Yellow’s cheek, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully. “You have surprising power for a defect,” she murmured. Yellow looked down, and her maker tutted. “No no,” she said, shaking her head, “look at me, sunlight.” When Yellow had obeyed, she smiled, and said, “I am White Diamond. I have brought you into existence to help me with my duties, to help me build an empire. It appears you can still be useful to me.”

“Thank you, my diamond,” Yellow mumbled, then bit her lip at the strange address. But it felt right, and White Diamond smiled, and Yellow felt a little less like a defect.

She helped White with gem creation, and the construction of their new kingdom. These new gems, smaller than them, far less powerful, saw her as nearly on a level with her maker, called them both their diamonds, and lived in awe of their glory. Yellow felt equal parts proud and afraid when this happened—it was wrong, she was a defect, she did not represent the same perfection and power as White—it was right. She was strong, she was greater than these gems in every respect, she was a diamond.

And none of them seemed to know she was defective.

Just under one hundred orbits after her emergence, White called Yellow to help her greet the newest diamond. “I began her formation at the same time as yours,” White told her as they approached the great warp pad that would take them to the planet where resources had been being used to make this diamond for over two billion orbits. “Perhaps this planet’s resources will bear better fruit—or perhaps you simply emerged too early, sunlight.”

It was almost teasing, almost affectionate, so Yellow ignored the sting and said nothing as they stepped onto the warp and White activated it.

The planet was, of course, dead and barren when they arrived. Each great step cast up plumes of dust, and they made the only sound for lightyears around. White stopped them in front of a massive stone slab, taller than White by a great deal, and Yellow wondered about the diamond that would soon step out. Would she be a mirror image of White, in all her perfection? Would she be a defect like Yellow?

…Could she be even more glorious than White?

They stood so, silent, for several cycles of this planet around its star. Its cycles were just slightly longer than Homeworld’s, and though diamonds could never get tired, Yellow found herself growing bored, and wondered how White knew the diamond was due to emerge soon. Could she have been wrong? Must they stand there for cycles more, for orbits, before the new diamond was born?

But no. Five cycles after they arrived, there was a flash, and a diamond stepped out of the hole in which she had been made.

She was blue.

White turned away in disgust, striding back towards the warp, but Yellow stepped forward, holding out her hands. She was in awe. This creature was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—perhaps not so luminous as White, but her eyes, her silvery hair… “Hello,” Yellow said, and her own voice sounded unfamiliar. “What is your name?” She thought she knew.

“I am Blue Diamond,” the diamond said, and Yellow’s knees felt weak because even her voice was beautiful. “What is your name?”

“I am Yellow Diamond,” she said. “Welcome to the world.”

She refused, she decided, to let this beautiful gem find out that she was defective. Yellow waited with her, helped her grow to know herself, and Blue was quick to learn her powers. the first time she activated her aura terrified them both, because neither had known what tears were until they began to flow from Yellow’s eyes unimpeded. By the time White returned, though, Blue was confident in her abilities, and White sighed, called her moonlight, and brought both back to Homeworld.

The next diamond was prepared by White fifty orbits after Blue’s emergence—Yellow knew what she was thinking. Perhaps this one would not be defective. Perhaps this one would be perfect. Perhaps, Yellow sometimes thought, White felt alone in her perfection, placed on a pedestal even by her fellow diamonds.

But no. White was the one to hold them at a distance. For all her smiles, all her caresses and coos of “sunlight” and “moonlight,” White still considered them defects. White Diamond was a paragon of all gems wished to be.

Orbits passed. New gems were discovered and invented, and their empire expanded so quickly White began the acquisition of nearby planets so as to find enough resources to make more gems. Diamonds, of course, required entire planets for their formation, but even the creation of common gems could suck a planet dry given enough time.

A new caste of gems was created, formed, unlike most gems, underwater. They were dainty and fragile, nearly brainless—pearls. It was found that they made remarkable servants.

When, one billion one hundred and three orbits after White had begun the formation of what she said would be the last diamond (the implied “defective or not” was heard only by Yellow), White brought her companions to the barren, reddish planet where their final facet would join them, Yellow somehow knew this one would be as defective as she and Blue.

She wasn’t expecting her to be so…small, though.

The little diamond looked up, up, up at them, and smiled, and Yellow thought even White melted at that. “Hello,” she said. “I am Pink Diamond. Who are you?”

Pink was so young, in a way that had nothing to do with the number of orbits Homeworld had taken around its star. She let her emotions boil over in a way far more explosive than Blue’s cool power, and far more often. She threw tantrums that could be heard for echoes around at their worst, but other times she laughed with such joy that Yellow had to fight a soft smile. Yellow, as the orbits passed and Homeworld’s conquests continued, had grown to take the lead in colonization. She was the logical general, the diamond in charge of many of Homeworld’s troops and minor wars—wars which were over within an orbit, sometimes only cycles, because these organic life forms could not stand up to their empire’s might, because Yellow Diamond’s power was great and her fury almost greater.

And yet Pink—and Blue—could slip into her chambers without drawing her wrath, interrupt her in her work without a growl or a snap passing her lips, and a single smile from either of them could coax her away.

“I worry, sometimes,” Blue said once, her hands on Yellow’s shoulders as she worked at a set of screens. Their pearls—the finally perfected model that had come out last orbit and contained none of the glitches of the previous eight iterations—stood quietly and obediently to the side, silent as they always were unless ordered to speak or sing.

“Mm,” Yellow replied, squinting at a report from a new colony. “What about?”

“Pink,” Blue said, and perhaps it was the mention of the youngest of the diamonds, or perhaps it was the tone of Blue’s voice, but Yellow paused in her perusal of the report, and craned her neck to look up at Blue.

“What about Pink?” she asked.

Blue glanced around, as if fearing that someone would overhear, and then said softly, “I worry that she may be a defect.”

_Defect._

The word—the first word Yellow had ever heard—had haunted her since her emergence. Defects were destroyed, in their perfect empire. Why White had allowed her own existence, and Blue’s, and Pink’s, was a mystery to Yellow, one that she would not allow Blue and Pink to desperately ponder as she did. She would not let them carry this weight of the knowledge that they would never be good enough, would never be powerful enough, would always be _wrong_. “A defect?” she found herself saying. It sounded as if her words came from a great distance. “Don’t be ridiculous, Blue. She’s a diamond.”

“She’s so much smaller than us, though,” Blue said, speaking more quickly now, like these thoughts had been growing and were now set free, and Yellow feared that those thoughts would lead to others. “And her powers—”

“We’re smaller than White,” Yellow said, placing a half-smirk on her face, “and are we defects? Pink was made a diamond, made by White Diamond. She is better than any lesser gem will ever be.”

Blue hummed, but then nodded, and said, “You’re right. Perhaps I am being ridiculous.”

“You are,” Yellow said, turning back to screens on which she could no longer focus with a feigned disinterest. “Besides—if Pink was defective, she would have been shattered as soon as it came into White’s notice, starlight or no.”

This placated Blue, though it raised those oft-repeated thoughts for Yellow, worries of her own defects, self-doubt, anger, fear.

But they soon passed.

And over the thousands and millions of orbits of Era 1, Yellow felt a contentment deep in her gem that she thought would never be extinguished.

And then Pink Diamond was shattered.

* * *

Yellow focused.

She worked.

She conquered planets.

She sent orders to the gems still stationed on Pink’s colony, orders to crush the rebel scum and avenge their diamond.

She joined the remaining two diamonds in their great attack against Earth, aiming to wipe out any life on the hunk of floating rock.

She never left her chambers.

This was how she coped.

On the one hundred and thirty-fourth cycle after Pink’s death, a pale orb floated through her wall, and opened up to reveal White’s unnerving pearl. Yellow made a face. She had never liked White’s habit of leeching gems of their color, controlling them completely, no matter how much simpler it made some things. She hadn’t done it to her old pearl—the one now as lost as Pink on that gem-forsaken planet—so Yellow didn’t know why she did it to this one.

But it was not Yellow’s place to question White Diamond.

“Yellow Diamond, White Diamond requests your presence in Blue Diamond’s chambers,” the pearl said with that empty smile. “Blue Diamond has been using her powers recklessly. White Diamond requests you stop her.”

Yellow nodded to show that she had heard, and stood.

The closer she got to Blue’s area of the palace, the bluer the air got, the greater the press of her power. Yellow fought the tears as long as she could, but by the time she reached the door of Blue’s chambers, where her pearl stood outside with her hands folded and her face wet, her cheeks were long damp. “Wait here, Pearl,” she said, and opened the door herself.

Blue was curled tightly on the floor, her sobs audible from across the room. Yellow flicked tears from her eyes, and made her way to join her fellow diamond, crouching beside her and reaching out a hand. “Blue,” she said quietly. “Draw it in.”

She only sobbed louder, and twisted to clutch at Yellow’s waist. Shocked by the sudden contact, Yellow did nothing, and Blue wrapped her arms around her and wept.

Slowly, as Yellow gently stroked her hair, Blue’s sobs ebbed, and the blue tint faded from the world until it was safely inside of Blue Diamond again. But Blue continued to cry, and so Yellow continued to cry, every now and then blinking away the moisture or wiping her eyes to clear her vision. She didn’t speak. She had time. She had done all her work and more for the cycle, indeed, for the next several cycles, and there were other gems to deal with emergencies. Should something truly urgent come up, White could fetch them herself.

Finally, Blue shifted.

She pulled slightly away, then dragged herself up Yellow’s body, her hands digging into the shoulder pads of Yellow’s uniform. She stared at Yellow for what seemed like an eternity.

And then she surged up, and kissed her.

Again, Yellow was too shocked to pull away, to react at all, really. She knew, of course, what a kiss was. She knew what they often meant. Had she imagined this moment, her fellow diamond’s lips pressed burningly against hers, her hands cupping Yellow’s cheeks? Yes, a thousand times. She had always been closest to Blue—White was White, and Pink was young and foolish. But Blue? Yellow had always thought Blue was the world.

This was not, obviously, how she had imagined. But still it was bliss.

Bliss, until Blue took her hand and lowered it, placed it between her own legs, though her garment provided a safe layer of protection. “Distract me,” she whispered against Yellow’s lips. “Please.”

And though Yellow felt a flare of anxiety, she nodded, and whispered in reply, “Anything for you,” because Blue was the one thing in the universe that truly made her weak.

And so Blue phased away her dress, and Yellow swallowed hard, and she knew _of_ this but of course had never done it herself, had never had a partner before this, had never touched herself like Blue wished to be touched. But tears still leaked thinly from Blue’s eyes, and grief and arousal distracted her, and she did not noticed Yellow’s uncertainty or discomfort. And when she brought Blue to her peak, Yellow felt a weak pride that was the smallest of flames compared to her roaring unease, but when Blue touched her upper thigh (too close _too close no no not there_ ) and asked in a whisper if she should return the favor, Yellow blurted, “No.”

Blue’s forehead wrinkled, and Yellow knew she’d said the wrong thing, she knew it was different and strange and _defective_ but— “Yellow?”

“You needn’t feel obligated,” Yellow said, managing to wrest her voice back into her own control. “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.” And wasn’t that hypocritical, in a strange way? Yellow was hyper-aware of Blue, of what she must be feeling, of her desire, and wanted her, trusted her, to communicate exactly what she wanted—but wouldn’t do her the same courtesy.

“I want to,” Blue said.

And so Yellow let her.

At first, at the very beginning, she hadn’t known what it was.

She’d asked White, when she was young, before Pink, before even Blue, about the activities lesser gems did during their very spare (though slowly increasing, with the expansion of their empire) free time. She’d seen some, walking, talking, for no apparent reason. She’d asked White what they did.

“Oh, nothing of consequence,” White said, waving a dismissive hand. “Conversation. Companionship. Some, of course, will be spending time reaching their peaks.”  
“Reaching their peaks?” Yellow had asked.

White had laughed. “Even diamonds are made with pleasure at the meeting of their thighs,” she said. “Of course, there isn’t a gem on Homeworld _I_ would partner with, but I don’t need a companion to reach my peak.”

Yellow hadn’t really understood—not until after Blue, after the creation of pearls, after it became something of the norm to see a quartz or other middle-class gem with their arms around an unmoving servant. Yellow watched, once, as a jasper in the square below the balcony where she stood slipped a hand into the tiny shorts of a pearl, the tight, manifested material barely hiding the rocking movement of her fingers. She saw the pearl bite her lip.

She learned, over time, that this was that thing White had told her about—although it was usually an act performed in private, between _real_ gems. The touch of a gem’s hand on a pearl was always for amusement, to make her friends laugh. Those touches rarely brought the pearls to this “peak” White had mentioned.

Yellow didn’t know the meaning, the connotation, of the word until that tear-filled moment with Blue.

It had caused a small spike of fear, when Blue’s moans grew suddenly louder, when her body stiffened against Yellow, but Yellow was a gem of logic above many things, and it did not take her long to label this thing she had done for her fellow diamond. But she could not understand. When Blue’s hand cupped her, when her fingers swirled against her and dipped inside her, she could not understand the appeal, the _want_ Blue had plainly expressed, because this felt quite like torture. And when there was a tightening in her abdomen, a sudden _peak_ , she almost wished Blue was still crying because everything going on in her body made her wish for that release of emotion.

She hated it.

There were few things she hated in this life.

She hated the aspects of herself that were manifestations of her defects.

She turned that hatred onto other gems, gems in which she saw herself and her oddities.

She hated Rose Quartz and the Crystal Gems for taking her Pink from her.

And she hated the touch of Blue Diamond’s hands beneath her uniform.

She hated, confusingly, that she hated it. She loved Blue, deeply, and wanted nothing but to help her cope, to make her happy, to show Blue, in her stilted way, that she loved her. Wasn’t this how? Shouldn’t this feel as wonderful for Yellow as it clearly did for Blue?

Was this yet another defect?

Though she privately knew, and knew that White knew, that Pink and Blue were both defective, she had never thought of them (particularly Blue) as quite so defective as herself. Perhaps it was her knowledge of her own defects, her need to nitpick herself, her great love for Blue and Pink and very little love for herself. Yellow did not self-analyze with any sympathy towards herself; all she saw was every mistake she had ever made, every _thing_ that made her different from White, _every little defect_.

And yes.

This was another.

It almost seemed that the number of gems bringing each other to their peaks exploded in the cycles after the first time Yellow and Blue came together in that way. Perhaps, Yellow thought, she was more aware now, more able to see the signs—but it was painfully clear that this, that this hatred of hers, was not a normal thing, this was a defect, this was another imperfection that she would have to hide for fear White would finally grow tired of her failure.

It was fine.

She could do this.

This was for Blue.

This was to hide her own imperfections.

Perhaps, if she did it for long enough, it would begin to be good. Perhaps she could fix one of her many, many faults. Perhaps (and later she would look back on this as one of the few irrational thoughts she’d ever genuinely entertained) this was the key to wiping away her defectiveness, once and for all.

And so her relationship with Blue blossomed like the glowing flowers on the planet that was secretly Yellow’s favorite of her colonies, and White retreated into her head ship for the last time, and Yellow took on more and more work, and thousands of orbits passed.

Yellow almost managed to convince herself that Blue’s fingers on her were alright. In between, when all Yellow had was a faint memory of her own visceral negative reaction, she told herself that she was remembering it incorrectly, she was exaggerating it, it had been fine. She was wrong, of course; every part of her body and gem hated it. But how could that be true, when she loved wrapping Blue in her arms during a spare moment of freedom, when she loved resting with her on great cushions and pressing light kisses to her face, her lips, dipping down to her gem?

How could she love some touches, and loathe others?

How could she adore slow, soft kisses, and abhor deeper, messier ones?

What had caused this defect?

She wondered, several times over the orbits of Era 2, if Homeworld would not be better off if she had been shattered in Pink’s place, if they would not be better off if she was shattered even now. It seemed impossible that a gem as defective as she had managed to not only successfully hide many of those defects, but also successfully run an empire almost single-handedly in the last orbits. It was wrong. _She_ was wrong.

Or so she believed, until a tiny human-gem hybrid climbed his way into her life, into her gem, and into her heart.

* * *

It was about one Earth year after the beginning of Era 3 when Yellow heard a word that would shape her life as much as the word “defect” had billions of years ago upon her emergence.

Steven had come, along with the pearl and the fusion (Garnet, Yellow reminded herself), for one of their dwindling but still often check-ins about the state of Homeworld and the various colonies across the universe. He was, at the moment, greeting Blue, standing in her palm and saying something that was making her laugh. Yellow allowed herself to smile; this was Era 3. She needn’t be the stone cold general anymore.

“Hello, White,” she heard a soft voice say, and turned her attention to the three pearls that stood off to the side. Pink’s old pearl—The Renegade—was standing with Yellow and Blue’s old pearls, who had, for the moment, decided to stay with their former masters and explore their options as newly freed gems. Blue Pearl was smiling softly as she greeted The Renegade, and Yellow considered her own willful blindness to the personalities and intelligences of these pearls, of pearls in general.

“Blue,” The Renegade responded, smiling too. “Yellow.”

“I don’t understand,” Yellow Pearl said, forgoing a greeting and crossing her arms. “I saw you warp in. I saw you and the garnet. How could you let a large gem touch you like that, bring you to your peak, _especially_ after the ball?”

“Yellow,” Blue Pearl said sharply, and The Renegade, a tiny teal blush barely visible to Yellow on her cheeks, shook her head.

“It’s fine,” she said. “And—I don’t. Garnet and I don’t do that.”

“You don’t?” said Blue Pearl, sounding surprised. “But you _are_ together, aren’t you? You’re partners?”

“Yes,” The Renegade said. “But—well, humans call it asexuality. I don’t like being brought to my peak, and I don’t like bringing others to their peak. Garnet knows and respects that, so…we don’t.”

And Yellow was frozen.

_What?_

This was—there was a word for it, was this what she’d been feeling, was this an option? No, no no, this was a defect, she was a defect she was wrong, she loved Blue, it was for Blue, there was no way this _pearl_ could possibly—

“Yellow?”

Yellow jerked her head towards the voice. It was Steven. He and Blue were watching her, equal looks of concern on their faces. It suddenly registered what her panic must look like outwardly, and she quickly folded it back, schooling her features, blanketing her mind. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?” Steven said, and his voice cracked in the way he’d told them meant he was growing. “You looked a million miles away for a second there.”

She tilted her head, a faint wash of confusion bumping against the blank wall she’d erected. “No, I’m right here.”

Steven laughed. “No no, it’s an expression. You looked like you were thinking about something really hard.”

“Oh,” she said, and _that word that word that word_ — “No. I’m fine.”

And the rest of the visit passed without incident, and Yellow stayed behind her careful wall, and once Steven and his friends had used the galaxy warp to return home, Yellow retreated as soon as would not be suspicious to her chambers. Once there, she stood at the window that overlooked their empire—though the word “empire” felt somehow wrong now. Or perhaps, she thought, it was not “empire,” but “their,” the possessive word reminding her of shatterings and conquests and defects and work work work and Blue—

This could not be right.

It was an Earthen word, an Earthen concept. The pearl, The Renegade, must have picked it up there. It was different for her. Defects were different for those Earth gems, for the self-named Off-Colors, for Blue and Pink. On Earth, they were celebrated. For the Off-Colors, they created a family. For Pink and Blue…

It had only added to their beauty and wonder.

How was it that Yellow, and Yellow alone (because she knew now that these “defects” were wrongly titled, that they had spent millennia shattering innocent gems), was _this_ wrong? How was it that she had survived as long as she had, in two long Eras of tyranny that destroyed the weak and twisted. How was it that no matter how hard she tried, however many times Blue cried out her name in exultation, no matter how many times she tried to fix her mistakes, she was _still so broken_?

There was a chime; a gem was outside her door.

She gathered the whipping trails of her thoughts, clenched her fists to hide the trembling of her hands, and opened the door.

The Renegade stood before her, looking up.

“Yellow Diamond,” she said, and inclined her head respectfully. Yellow returned the gesture. It was _almost_ easy, with this gem, to forget the billions of orbits of servitude from her cut, the billions of mistakes on the part of the Diamond Authority, on the part of Yellow—

Almost.

“I wished to speak with you, if you have the time.”

“I do,” Yellow said, and she’d had so many orbits to learn to lie, to hide any hint of anxiety. “Please, come in.”

“I couldn’t help but notice, earlier,” The Renegade said once Yellow had taken a seat at her desk and helped her up to put them at a closer level. “When we first arrived.”

Yellow clenched her fists again, working them tight and tighter in pulses. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

The Renegade smiled, and there was something about it that—oddly—reminded Yellow of White, of White in Era 1 when she would call Pink starlight. “You were listening to us, weren’t you? Myself and the other pearls?”

Yellow didn’t respond, couldn’t respond, didn’t know how to respond to this pearl who was trying to—what? Help her? Yellow was beyond help. Her only hope was to hide as many of her defects as she could, to work harder and harder to fix them, to fix herself, to help this world she’d had such a great hand in warping and destroying.

“There was really only one thing you could’ve had so strong a reaction to,” The Renegade said gently. “I know that you and Blue Diamond are…close.”

Yellow felt as if something had wrapped around her chest and begun to squeeze. She fought the instinctive urge to shake her head, to refute anything and everything the pearl was saying, to (politely) ask her to leave and then find something to direct this awful energy to because Yellow felt like she was going to explode she felt like—

“Yellow,” The Renegade said. “Have you talked to Blue about how you’re feeling?”

“No.” And it burst out, it was a river, an ocean, as unstoppable as the tears gems cried when Blue lost control. “Of course not. How could I? She doesn’t even know that _she’s_ defective, let alone—I could never. And she’s not, really, not as much as I am not—not in the ways—that word doesn’t even _mean_ anything anymore, because we were _wrong_ about it, w-we, and I-I, I don’t understand how I—how one gem could possibly be so _defective_.”

She stopped, bit her lip hard enough that it hurt. That was not how Yellow operated. She did not share those innermost thoughts of her own imperfections. Now, when there was, she had to admit, no real fear behind her silence, it was almost habit, habit mixed with the innate knowledge that her own problems and cracks and defects were nothing to burden any gem but herself.

And yet this tiny waif of a pearl had drawn it all out of her in the span of two minutes.

“Get out,” she growled, but she knew her voice was desperate, knew it didn’t carry the weight of poofing or shattering like it used to, knew The Renegade would see right through her.

And sure enough:

“No.”

She leapt to the arm of Yellow’s chair, moved close enough that she could reach out and lay a hand against Yellow’s arm. “This isn’t a defect, Yellow.”

Yellow scoffed. “And what would you know of that? By the rules of Homeworld, _every one_ of the Crystal Gems is defective.”

“By the _old_ rules of Homeworld,” The Renegade stressed. “Why are you holding yourself to a standard you promised Steven over a year ago you’d stop holding others to?”

“Because I am a diamond,” she said.

“So was Pink,” The Renegade retorted. “So is Steven. So is Blue. You said it yourself—Blue is defective by the standards of White Diamond. You were all supposed to be white diamonds, weren’t you? There wasn’t supposed to be any difference amongst you.”

Yellow shook her head. “No,” she said, “there wasn’t. Blue and Pink never knew. I didn’t tell them.”

“But you always knew.”

“Yes.”

“Hm. Do you still consider Blue Diamond a defect?”

“No, but she was never as defective as me. Her only crime was her coloration and size, the same can be said of Pink. But I—”

“You,” the pearl interrupted, and the oddity of that was enough to silence Yellow when she would have ignored and spoken over the interruption from any other gem, “are clearly too hard on yourself. If you hadn’t told me you had any defects, I wouldn’t have known. I still don’t know what they are, why you think you’re defective.”

“This, for one!” Yellow said, gesturing around her. “The reason you came! The—the word you said, the…”

“Asexuality,” The Renegade said. “And it is not a defect.”

“How can it not be?” Yellow said. “This is something all gems want, something all gems enjoy. I do not. There is something wrong with me.”

“Differences and imperfections are beautiful,” The Renegade said, lowering herself into a cross-legged seat. “I understand that that is something you’re still learning. But tell me—how is this—how is asexuality—different from any other ‘defect’ that Homeworld has punished, but is now accepting, even celebrating? What makes _you_ so unforgivable?”

Yellow opened her mouth—

But nothing came out.

“Yellow Diamond,” said The Terrifying Renegade Pearl, “you need to let go.”

* * *

Blue was, of course, horrified.

“How could you never tell me?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes. For once, Yellow thought the tears in her own eyes were hers and hers alone, not simply a reaction to Blue’s. “I never wanted to hurt you!”

Yellow shrank into herself, allowing the physical sign of her previously hidden feelings, the newness of it all burning in her gem. “I…couldn’t.”

“It’s a difficult thing to speak about, when there are certain assumptions.” The Renegade had accompanied Yellow, had helped her speak to Blue, because despite the embarrassment and the fact that this conversation was one of the most intimate things Yellow had ever done, she knew she needed the pearl to hold her accountable. “Homeworld has never been the best at consent.” Yellow thought of Pink’s last ball, of the thousands and millions of pearls who had been touched in the same way that made her feel sick to even think of it. Perhaps they were not def—perhaps they were not like her, not like The Renegade, in that sense, but Yellow imagined how many thousands of times worse her hatred of the act would be if it was with any gem other than Blue.

“If there’s never an explicit question,” The Renegade was saying, “it’s often never talked about. Sometimes, that results in something like the two of you: your relationship is by no means wrong or not real, but there are certain things you need to communicate to be sure each party is equally happy and fulfilled. Do you think those communications will happen now?”

Yellow nodded. She hoped, quietly, shyly, that her nod conveyed everything to The Renegade. Her thanks. Her relief. Her weightlessness.

When The Renegade smiled gently, she thought it had.

“I’m so sorry,” Blue whispered once the pearl had left to return once again to her planet and her family. “I’m so sorry.”

Yellow shook her head, thousands of words bunched in a knot in her throat, and drew her beloved into her arms. Blue was shaking, mumbling apologies that ran into each other and became barely intelligible, and Yellow rocked her gently, waited patiently, felt the lightness of her gem at the acceptance she felt coming off of Blue in waves, because would she be this sorry if she thought Yellow was a defect?

No.

She would not.

And so the two diamonds sat on the cushions upon which they had joined time and time again, the cushions that had somehow been Yellow’s only comfort and only terror, and they talked for nearly a full cycle, sharing tears and words and love, running fingers across cheeks and through hair and over gems. It was only when White came in search of them, and reeled back awkwardly while apologizing for interrupting them, that they stopped talking, joining their maker and stepping into the light of Homeworld’s glory.

And Yellow watched White, watched the way she was somehow tenser and more relaxed than Yellow had ever seen her. There was a pink tinge on her cheeks even now, that blush that they’d called “off-color” the first time they’d seen it. White was changing, Yellow thought.

They all were.

Blue’s smile came so much more easily now, after so little time in this new Era. She was blooming. She was growing in a way Yellow hadn’t thought possible for gems—but she was coming to see that growth, that change, was only natural. It was certainly beautiful on Blue—though Yellow thought everything was beautiful on Blue

She slipped her hand into her love’s without thinking, and Blue squeezed her fingers and continued speaking without missing a beat, and White laughed at something she’d said, and Yellow thought that they’d all be alright, in the end.

They were learning to change.

They were learning to communicate.

They were learning to love.


End file.
